This afternoon, Bapak would like to give some explanations concerning the significance of the spiritual training [latihan] you receive, and also relating to faith and everyday life. In reality, the training you receive is worship of the One God. So there's no need for you to worry and feel disappointed or troubled, and think it's only an exercise and not worship of God.

Bapak says the training [latihan] is really to be considered worship of God, because the movements you receive within you - although they are still incomplete and not yet as hoped for - are the awakening of your soul [jiwa], are willed by God. Why does Bapak say these movements are willed by God? Because the movements you receive and feel within you when you do the latihan are not intentional; they are beyond your thinking and desires. Clearly, when you receive the latihan you are free of thinking, desires and wanting.

This is the reality. It is for this reason that people who are seekers and want to know, or want to be able to receive something from God, consider it necessary to calm their heart and inner feeling. They isolate themselves in places far from the crowd, where there are few disturbing sounds, in order that they may experience a state of true peace in their inner feeling. By doing so they hope to obtain a revelation from the One God. But human beings can receive a revelation from God only when they really surrender everything they experience in their feeling and thinking.

They have to put themselves entirely in God's hands, and really obey God's commands to them. For the gift from the will of the One God cannot be mixed with, and cannot be compared with the will and progress of man's thinking mind.

You have all heard and read in the Bible the story of how the Prophet Jesus was born and grew up. Was not the Prophet Jesus born in a common place? It is said that the Prophet Jesus was born in a stall and was the child of someone who had no means. Such was the Prophet Jesus's life from childhood, and when he grew up he became a guide for mankind. However, the circumstances of the Prophet Jesus's birth and childhood led many people to say Jesus wasn't really a messenger from God. Usually, someone who is very famous and clever has been taught from childhood to adulthood and has a high education; moreover, he is descended from a high ancestry. So, when the Prophet Jesus was still small, even his own brothers and friends, let alone others, didn't believe him and always looked down on him. Why was that? It was because, when Jesus was still a boy, he didn't go to school. He was uneducated. He only tended the sheep.

Why did God choose a child like that, someone of such a lowly status and uneducated? In reality, God was showing mankind that no one can know God's will. A human being will only be able to receive guidance from God if he can paralyze his own cleverness, master his own passions, master his own anger and greed, and overcome his own human pride. So the Prophet Jesus, a child born on the lowest level of society, who didn't go to school, who had no standing, who had absolutely nothing, was willed by God to be the one who could receive words and revelations from God. And now he is believed by over half the world. Why was the Prophet Jesus - or a boy like Jesus - able to receive revelations from God? Because the main conditions, within the Prophet Jesus's inner feeling, were none other than faith, obedience, patience, surrender, and entrusting himself to God with sincere submission. He felt within himself that there was none who willed, none who worked or gave a way for him, save God. So, in the Prophet Jesus's life, he gave God more importance than his own soul [jiwa].

Such are the fruits and results obtained by someone chosen by God, someone who, in his inner feeling, always has faith and always surrenders and entrusts himself to God with sincere submission.

Among the fruits and results obtained from what God has given to man, or which man has received from God, is that which you all receive. As you yourselves are able to verify, when you receive it you let go of all your thoughts, and let go of all that you feel in your inner feeling, and you really believe in God. Only then can you receive the movement within you. If, in the training [latihan], you think of something, even a little, it stops. Clearly, the training you receive - that is, your receiving in the training - cannot be mixed with your desires or thoughts; you only direct yourself to God. For even though you haven't received very much and your receiving isn't very strong yet, it is by God's will.

The movements you make don't yet seem like those of people who are really worshipping God. Nevertheless, these movements are real worship because they are willed by God, whereas ordinary worship is not. So these movements are more appropriate and more acceptable than if you worship by imitating others, and only from your ordinary understanding. For, worship by imitating, or from the heart, only reaches your own heart, no more and no less. One day you will be able to receive the reality and evidence of what Bapak is saying here. People do not want to worship God; rather, they even abuse God, or demean and slur the greatness and wisdom of the One God. When, for example, you worship in the ordinary way, you give expression in your heart, or in words, to your wish to worship God: 'O God, I worship You, and I beg You to forgive all my sins.' But sometimes, in saying that, you are thinking of when you quarrelled with someone, the time your friend said bad words to you; or you remember your enemy or someone you hate. You remember all kinds of things as you are giving expression to your worship of God. So, just supposing your worship as expressed in your words were to come before God, it would surely carry with it the badness and evil of all kinds of things that are in your thoughts.

This is different from what you receive in the training [latihan]; even though it's still a little, and is not yet like worship, nevertheless it is willed by God, free from the mind, and your thinking and desires cannot interfere. When Bapak says it's still only a little, indeed, these are still early days, and you are still at the beginning; you haven't yet reached the level required.

Certainly, as the days, months and years go by and change, your receiving will also change, until eventually you will obtain proof and real evidence, and you will be in a position to weigh up whether what you have received is good or not compared with other ways. For the time being, just receive what you receive in the training [latihan], while the feeling in your heart should always be full of patience and faith, completely entrusting yourself to God and directing everything to the One God.

As Bapak has explained in previous talks, the training you receive begins from the coarse, lowest layer. The lowest layer alone takes rather a long time, because on the lowest layer - that is, this coarse physical body - all the members of the body have to come to life. And the life or vitality in all your physical members will also bring health to your whole self. So before you advance to the second level, which Bapak calls the body of the feelings, it is first necessary that what you feel in your inner feeling should become alive and healthy again.

Clearly, man's worship of God by God's will brings happiness to his life, meaning it will bring health to his inner self. Indeed, the soul [jiwa] will be able to become healthy if this coarse physical body is healthy. That's why in general, both here and in other countries, people need to do some kind of sport. Sport is necessary for the body to become healthy and strong, so that the mind will also be healthy. Moreover, many people say that a healthy physical body can bring health to the soul.

So people make all kinds of efforts to achieve the health or revival of the human soul. Of course, some of these efforts achieve their end, and others do not, while many get nowhere. For, indeed, it is very difficult to bring the human soul back to a healthy state. It can only be done by the power or grace of the One God. And this, Bapak says, is what all of you have received, children. Bapak can say that this training [latihan] you receive is instruction from God, not instruction from man to man. The proof of this will arise by itself within each one of you. You yourself will be astonished and amazed, because what is in your inner feeling will arise by itself. You will be able to discover or receive something you've never learned. The state attained in this training [latihan] is really amazing. Indeed, God's wisdom, greatness and power are such that they cannot be overreached by man.

This is why Bapak hopes and suggests that you always have a feeling of patience and faith, entrusting yourselves to God with sincere submission. Never have a feeling of wanting to understand quickly, because it is impossible to achieve anything by forcing your mind in the way people use their ordinary thinking to study worldly things in schools. On the contrary, we need to banish far away our mind which likes to be in a hurry. Later, when the lowest layer is finished - or half finished and the second layer has already begun - the process steps up to the second level, that is, into the feelings or the body of the feelings. There you will begin to be able to feel things in the training [latihan]. Your feelings will be brought to life or purified; they will become alive or clean, so you will be able to receive things in your feelings.

Bapak will give you an example to illustrate: suppose, once you have reached the body of the feelings, you have a meal at a restaurant - for instance, a beefsteak. When you are on the point of eating the beefsteak, you may have a very strange feeling, because the person who cooked it was perhaps thinking too much, or in a bad state, or having a quarrel with his friend. So you feel very strange about the beefsteak. And from that strange feeling, you immediately know, 'Ah, this is because it was cooked by someone who was in this state.' You immediately know, understand and feel the origins, or the real condition, of the food you are eating. This is just a small sample of one of the kinds of things you get when you've progressed to the level of the body of the feelings.

Whenever necessary, you will certainly be able to adjust to the situation. For example, suppose you have received the training [latihan], but your husband hasn't yet; or suppose a man has received the latihan, but his wife hasn't yet. Let's say you are following the latihan but your husband is not yet; and suppose by God's grace you've already progressed to the body of the feelings; you will experience something very odd there. For you will be able to grasp what is right and wrong, and sense what is clean and what is still dirty. So at home, you may have the wish to approach your husband, but when you are near him you feel as if you're in hell. Why is that? It's because you are clean, but your husband isn't, because he hasn't received the latihan yet. Sometimes you can force yourself to be close to your husband. But naturally, when you force your feelings, you feel very unwell.

That's why, if the wife is following the latihan, wherever possible the husband should also follow the latihan. Or, if the man is following the latihan, the wife should do the latihan also. Naturally, if husband and wife are following the latihan and developing together, they will both be happy. Before, for instance, the husband went away and rarely came home; or, on the other hand, the wife liked to go off to the club and rarely stayed home. But when they have reached a certain level, she is happier at home, close to her husband, than she is with others. So Bapak says, there will only be peacefulness between them if they can be united or close to one another.

These are the results you can receive later on. You will have receivings like that in the training [latihan] you are now doing. But if the training you receive - which Bapak has said is, in reality, worship of the One God - is still not entirely satisfying for your heart - because the heart is accustomed to worship God in the way it usually does every day, and also because you don't yet understand the meaning and truth of what happens in the training - the question may arise in your heart: 'How can I forget my worship of God? Will this reach God? Should my worship just be like this? Or should I also worship in the usual way?' So Bapak agrees with your wish as Christians or Muslims to perform your worship of God as usual, as well as the training [latihan] you receive. Why does Bapak agree? Because your heart is still unable to grasp what goes on and what there is in the latihan.

So, to satisfy your heart, as you still feel anxious, Bapak agrees that, besides doing the latihan, you continue to worship and pray to the One God as you have been used to doing. However, as Bapak explained before, it is impossible or extremely unlikely for that kind of worship from the heart and mind to reach its true goal. And, when you pray, or worship God in the ordinary way [syariat, prescribed religious observance], Bapak hopes you won't do the training [latihan]. Don't mix the two; because if you're worshipping and you go into latihan - Bapak means by this that you let go of your thinking, desires and will - it won't be worship in the ordinary way; it will be like when you do the latihan.

Suppose you are following the Christian prayers. You go like this, then you kneel, and then you do this, and then you do that.

If you don't feel or think about anything - in other words, you let go of what you feel in your inner feeling - you won't go like this or like this, but you may even stand up and move like this. 'How come I'm moving like this?' So, when you're praying, just pray. Don't mix the two.

Likewise, when Muslims do the prayers, they pray like this: 'Allahu akbar' [God is Most Great]. When they pray in the usual way they do this. Then they bend down, and then they kneel, and then they bow down to the ground. But if in doing the prayer one says, 'Allahu akbar' and then lets go of everything, one won't do it like that, but like this: 'Allahu akbar.'Why? Because, indeed, the two ways are different. The level of man's heart is indeed different from the level of the divine. That's why Bapak tells you not to mix them. For the one is instruction from God, and the other is instruction from man to man. Just wait patiently and one day you'll be able to tell the difference.

Bapak has been given by God the ability to adjust to and know what is the mind's work, and what is God's work - called, as Bapak often says, the existence of God's power. For example, if Bapak says, as a Muslim, 'Allahu akbar,' Bapak says it like this [with usual movement]: 'Allahu akbar,' not like this: 'Allahu akbar.' But if Bapak wants it with singing, for example, Na-nana-na [Bapak sings] - that's wrong - it should be, Na-na-na-na [Bapak sings], so it's in harmony.

Why is it that when you say, 'Almighty God, please give me spiritual knowledge,' you don't receive what you ask for? It's because this [body] is not yet completed. So you say, 'God, forgive me,' [with deep tremor]. It doesn't fit. You're not yet able to receive the difference between that which is required for this world and that which is required for life after death. But you will be able to achieve it.

You will be able to receive it when you are ready. In the meantime, you have to be really patient; for God knows, God is All-wise, God knows the measure of man, and knows you more than you do yourself. For instance, please receive: 'I have a head. Where is my head?' [Testing.] Now, Bapak will ask, who was able to receive it? Who else received it? Were there some of you who couldn't receive it? If there were, Bapak will explain.

Why weren't you able to receive and feel it? This is only the level of the feeling, still within the coarse, lowest level. For those who were unable to feel and receive it, the current of life from the human soul [jiwa] hasn't reached that far, so you don't feel yet that you have a head. And yet, you know and feel in the ordinary way that you have a head; and with that head you can think, see, hear, smell, speak and feel. In this respect, there's no difference between those who are able to receive and those who are not.

But in reality, in the spiritual life, there's a big difference. For those who can receive it, even though not yet completely, the life current that reaches the head is really from the perfect human being. But for those who haven't yet received the life current coming to the head, what is obtained is not yet from the perfect human being, but from the material, plant or animal level.

So it doesn't yet suit your human name. And what if you die? Let us say that the name of the person who is not yet able to receive is Minah. After her death, Minah will not take along her true inner state - that is, the perfect existence she has as a human being because her head is still the head, for example, of a cow, her hands are still the paws of a cat, her body is still the body of a horse, and her legs are still the legs of a dog. So, while she was alive in this world, although she had a human form, her force was still a force that was foreign for a human being.

As Bapak has said, the life or inner feeling of a human being is always manipulated and influenced by forces below the human. That's why you have to do the latihan and worship God, so that it can all be cleared out with God's help. Then, once everything that influences and suppresses your inner feeling has been cleared out, you will really be able to receive and feel, 'I am Minah, entirely.' So if you go to heaven, well, it's I, the whole of me is Minah. But if you haven't yet come to that, and you're not ready yet, and you cannot worship God yet, only the wish will go to heaven, because you've always wanted to go to heaven. What's the use of wanting to go to Paris if you don't go to Paris? It's only a wish that you make at home. You want to be rich, but it's only wishful thinking. The fact is, you're not rich yet. You can imagine to yourself, 'I want to be a king,' but in fact you're not a king. So it's no use at all.

It's different with this training [latihan]. It's not just a wish; it really is fulfilled. It really happens; it really is carried out. That's why this [body] has to be alive and clean, for the perfect human force to come into being. As Bapak has said repeatedly, it can probably only be done by a training like this, which can find help from God for the purification of the whole self.

And whatever you feel in your heart and in your feelings, you need to be patient. The whole of you needs to be patient. Bapak will give an example to explain. With this training [latihan], as you begin to become alive, alive, alive, and cleaner, cleaner, cleaner, sometimes you feel a very strong urge in your heart or desire, or passion [hartstocht]. You need to sublimate this or surrender it to God with full patience, because, if you really surrender in the training [latihan] that you receive, it will disappear by itself.

What is the reason why it sometimes happens like that? As Bapak said before, man's inner feeling is influenced by subhuman forces. So, the place that Bapak just referred to, namely the hartstocht or sex, or passion of man, is filled with all kinds of influences. There are, for example, animal entities there, the force of a horse, the force of a dog, and all kinds of forces. Of course, you cannot know or understand them, because they are within you, and can't be seen or understood.

So it's clear that the strong urge in the case of a woman to approach a man, and in the case of a man to approach a woman, is not the will of the perfect human being, not the will of the human soul [jiwa], but the will, for example, of a dog, a horse, a cow, a water-buffalo, a cat, or any one of a whole variety of forces. Later on you'll be able to receive and understand all this yourselves, in the latihan. You yourselves will be able to receive it in the latihan. 'What is there in the nest of my spiritual feeling?' you may ask, and in answer to your question you may hear, 'Meow, meow, meow.' 'Ah, it's only a cat. What else is there?' and then a moment later, 'Woof! woof! woof!'

The spiritual life is filled with secrets of human life. And Bapak asks you all please to excuse him if he asks, why do many men like very much to have intercourse and mingle with women? Well, of course a man should unite with a woman and mix with women, but the majority do it not because it is the will of the human being, but because of the will of the subhuman forces that are in the sex. If you liken this to someone writing, the way of writing is outside the norm of a perfect human being. So, many who do it are almost no different from animals. Bapak asks you to excuse him, because spiritual matters are indeed about secrets of human life.

What is called God's will is that man should worship God and be able to receive instructions from God, so that in doing everything that is normal for human beings, he is instructed by God. Thus, in carrying out the union between man and wife, he never forgets his belief in the One God. A man's heart is open in the presence of a beautiful woman. And the woman doesn't have union because she is influenced by sweet words and things that always attract her, but because it is willed by the One God. So, the union of man and wife is not as a man and woman, but a unity of life, one and eternal.

In reality, man and woman only appear here, in this world. If later they ascend the path, for example, Bapak says, to heaven, whereas before they went like this, hand in hand, when they come to that path, they will be one. So in truth, man and woman are really one.

Why, then, should they be made two when they are born on earth? Because God wills that human beings should be able to reproduce their own kind. With the existence of two different forms, it is willed by God that there should be a friction between them, and from that friction a new being should be created: a child that can be born of human beings. Human beings are born on this earth male or female because it is willed by God for them to reproduce their kind. So, it is surely very wrong if human beings are born on this earth and then are unwilling to procreate and do not want to be a vessel for having descendants.

This accords with the teachings and advice of the prophets and human beings who received revelations from God. A child is the reality of the union of man and woman and is also proof that human beings are really obedient to God's will that they should reproduce their kind and have descendants on earth. If it were not willed by God that human beings should have descendants, surely males and females would not be born on this earth. It would be enough if everyone were male, or everyone were female. Then there would be no fathers or mothers, and there would be no descendants.

People only have to look down to see that below human beings are animals, below animals are plants, and below plants are material things. If you have a cow, a dog, a cat, or a water buffalo, and you want the dog to have puppies, the water buffalo or cow to have a calf, or the cat to have kittens, why don't you want to have children yourself? This is wrong, is it not? It's a mistake towards God. What then if it is wrong? It is wrong, and you admit it.

As for how to change the mistake, only God knows that. The only way for you is to obtain guidance from God: 'How can my mistake be corrected?' That's the only way. But as Bapak said before, you have to be patient and put yourself in God's hands with trust and obedience. Don't be in a hurry; because if you're in a hurry, it will not open but will close the way. The way will be closed. But if you just surrender, the way will open wider and wider and wider ...

This is Bapak's explanation relating to the way of the spiritual training [latihan] you all have received. In this latihan, you will receive - although you haven't yet - instructions concerning health and ordinary everyday matters, and also concerning the needs of life between man and woman.

Your union with your husband, or the union of a man with his wife should not be an obstruction and should not be something dirty, but should be a worship of God, so that a man's closeness to his wife does not lessen his good fortune or stand in the way of his obtaining happiness and success.

It is told in history that a man will attain happiness because of his wife, and a man's greatness, goodness and excellence will be destroyed also because of woman. So one may ask, 'How can it be that he is destroyed by her, and happy because of her? And what is the way that benefits him, and what is the way that makes it difficult for him?' Bapak says the only thing that can bring happiness to a man and increase his name and good fortune in life is when the union of man and woman is God's will. The collapse or fall of a man's great name and happiness is also because of woman, when their closeness or union is impelled by the animal force or by some other subhuman force. That is the difference between a man's union with his wife when it is from the passions and when it is God's will.

The foregoing is a spiritual explanation and clarification concerning the life of human beings, between man and wife. When human beings behave and act by following God's orders in reproducing their kind, that is, having descendants, and also in the way they do things in this world, they will not spoil this world, but will increase its beauty, welfare and peace. On the other hand, if human beings only follow their passions in the way they have union between man and woman, in the way they procreate the human seed and in the way they improve this world, this world will always be enveloped in an atmosphere of confusion and alarm. It is clear that this world will be good because of human beings who really receive guidance from God. And this world will be spoiled and confused because of the behaviour and actions of human beings who are stimulated entirely by the passions.

That is why the prophets, human beings who were able to receive guidance from God, advised that people should always worship God as well as carrying out their life in this world. They also recommended that people should obey God in doing things, so that they can prove what is really God's will for man through their worldly life. For God created man on this earth, with the earth and all the kinds of things he needs as accessories. It is not God's will that it should be destroyed. It is willed that human beings, together with this world and all its contents, should become good, beautiful, peaceful, safe and prosperous.

This is the end of Bapak's explanation concerning spiritual matters, and concerning your worship and your training [latihan], which Bapak calls the spiritual training [latihan], in order that from this latihan
[tape ends abruptly].